# Tongue Twisters & Pronunciation Practice

## How to practice with an AI listener

Use the STT tools already in `~/dev/media-scripts/`:

```bash
sttecho.sh /tmp/practice.txt      # records, transcribes, plays your voice back
# or just:
stt /tmp/practice.txt
```

Read a line below out loud, then compare what got appended to `practice.txt`
against the line you actually read. A mistranscription on your target sound
(e.g. "light" heard as "right", "think" heard as "sink") is the AI telling you
the sound wasn't acoustically distinct — that's your signal to redo that line.
Repeat until the transcription comes back correct.

---

## Classic tongue twisters

1. Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.
2. She sells seashells by the seashore.
3. How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?
4. Red lorry, yellow lorry, red lorry, yellow lorry.
5. The sixth sick sheik's sixth sheep's sick.
6. Irish wristwatch, Swiss wristwatch.
7. Toy boat, toy boat, toy boat.
8. Unique New York, unique New York, unique New York.

## Minimal pairs (say each pair back to back)

### L vs R
- light / right
- lead / read
- collect / correct
- glass / grass
- long / wrong

### TH (voiceless) vs S / T
- think / sink
- three / tree
- thin / tin
- bath / bass

### V vs W
- vine / wine
- vet / wet
- very / wary
- vest / west

### SH vs S vs CH
- she / sea
- wash / watch
- cash / catch
- shop / chop

## Connected-speech passages

### The Rainbow Passage
When the sunlight strikes raindrops in the air, they act like a prism and
form a rainbow. The rainbow is a division of white light into many
beautiful colors. These take the shape of a long round arch, with its path
high above, and its two ends apparently beyond the horizon. There is,
according to legend, a boiling pot of gold at one end. People look, but no
one ever finds it. When a man looks for something beyond his reach, his
friends say he is looking for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

### The North Wind and the Sun
The North Wind and the Sun were disputing which was the stronger, when a
traveler came along wrapped in a warm cloak. They agreed that the one who
first succeeded in making the traveler take his cloak off should be
considered stronger than the other. Then the North Wind blew as hard as he
could, but the more he blew the more closely did the traveler fold his
cloak around him; and at last the North Wind gave up the attempt. Then the
Sun shined out warmly, and immediately the traveler took off his cloak.
And so the North Wind was obliged to confess that the Sun was the
stronger of the two.